‘The contract NPTV has with the ITV network is due for renegotiation. The network knows NPTV have been talking to satellite and cable companies with a view to them buying first rights in Northerners for the next three years. So the network knows that the price is going to have to go up. There’s going to be a bidding war. And the only winners are going to be the management at NPTV, with their pocketfuls of share options. If they’re wrong and the viewers don’t follow the programme in droves, it doesn’t matter to them, because they’ll already have their hot sticky hands on the cash,’ Clive explained.
‘So Turpin needs to plug the storyline leak,’ Gloria said, examining her cards.
‘I’m not sure I follow you. Surely any publicity is good publicity?’
‘Not when it involves letting the public know in advance what’s going to happen,’ Teddy said, raising his eyes to the heavens as if I was stupid. I didn’t react. After all, I wasn’t the one who was currently fourteen quid out of pocket.
Clive took pity on my puzzlement. ‘If people know the big storylines in advance, a lot of them think it won’t be the end of the world if they miss a few eps, because they know what they’ll be missing. Once they get out of the habit of watching every ep religiously, their viewing habits drift.’
‘They find other programmes on at the same time that they get to like. They don’t bother setting the video to watch us because they think they already know what’s going to happen. Or they just go down the pub. Before you know it, they’ve lost touch with the programme,’ Gloria continued. ‘One heart.’
‘Especially now we’re three times a week. You dip out for two, three weeks and when you come back, you don’t know some of the faces. I’m going to pass this time.’
Teddy tugged at his shirt collar, a mannerism either he’d borrowed from Arthur Barrowclough or the character had borrowed from him. ‘Two hearts. And every time the viewing figures drop, John Turpin sees his share of the profits going down.’
‘And we get to watch his blood pressure going up,’ Gloria said. ‘Three hearts,’ she added, noting my shake of the head.
‘I’d have thought he’d be on to a loser, trying to find out who’s behind it. It’s too good an earner for the mole to give it up, and no journalist on the receiving end of a series of exclusives like that is going to expose a source,’ I said.
‘It won’t be for want of trying,’ Gloria said. ‘He’s even got every script coded so that any photocopied pages can be traced back. I hope whoever it is really is making a killing, because they’re not going to earn another shilling off NPTV if they’re caught.’
‘You’ll never work in this town again,’ Teddy drawled in a surprisingly convincing American accent. I was so accustomed to him behaving in character I’d almost forgotten he was an actor.
‘And speaking of making a killing, Gloria, any more news from your stalker?’
Gloria scowled. ‘By heck, Clive, you know how to put a girl off her game. No, I’ve heard nowt since I took Kate on. I’m hoping we’ve frightened him off.’
‘How do you know it’s a he?’ Clive said.
‘Believe me, Clive, I know.’
We played out the hand in silence for a moment. In bridge as in life, I’ve always been better at defence than attack. Clive also seemed to relish the taste of blood and we left Gloria and Teddy three tricks short of their contract. My client raised her eyebrows and lit another cigarette. ‘She lied so beautifully, Teddy. I really believed her when she said she was crap at this.’
‘Don’t tell Turpin,’ Teddy said sharply. ‘He’ll hire her out from under you.’
‘My dears, for all we know, he’s done that already,’ Clive said archly.
I should be so lucky, I thought as they all stared at me. I’m not proud about whose money I take. Maybe I should engineer another encounter with Turpin the hatchet man and kill two birds with one stone. Gloria’s eyes narrowed, either from the smoke or because she could see the wheels going round in my head. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned me. ‘Chances are it’s one of our brain-dead mates who’s ratting to the vampires, and I don’t want that on my conscience.’
I nodded. ‘Fair enough. Whose deal is it?’
VENUS IN LEO IN THE 4TH HOUSE
She can show great extravagance, both practical and emotional, to those she cares for. She is loyal but likes to dominate situations of the heart. She has creative ability, which can sometimes lead to self-dramatization. Her domestic surroundings must be easy on the eye.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
My second evening bodyguarding Gloria Kendal taught me that I really should pay more attention to the client. The evening engagement I’d so blithely agreed to turned out to be another of the nights from hell that seemed to be how Gloria spent her free time. That night, she was guest of honour at the annual dinner dance of the ladies’ division of the North West branch of the Association of Beverage and Victuals Providers. I’ve never been in the same room as that much hairspray. If taste were IQ, there would only have been a handful of them escaping Special Needs education. I’d thought the Blackburn outfit would have blended in nicely at a women-only dinner, but I was as flash as a peahen at a peacock convention. I should have realized Gloria wasn’t wearing those sequins and diamanté for a bet.
About ten minutes after we arrived in Ormskirk, I sussed this wasn’t one of those dinners you go to for the food. I know ’70s food is coming back into fashion, but the Boar and Truffle’s menu of prawn cocktail, boeuf bourguignon and, to crown it all, Black Forest gateau, owed nothing to the Style Police or the foodies. You could tell that every cooking fashion in the intervening twenty years had passed them by. This was a dinner my Granny Brannigan would have recognized and approved of. It wasn’t entirely surprising; nobody who had any choice in the matter would spend a minute longer than they had to in a town characterized by a one-way system that’s twice the size of the town centre itself. It’s the only place I know where they’re so proud of their back streets they have to show them to every unwary motorist who gets trapped there on the way to Southport.
The landladies, most of whom almost certainly served better pub grub back home, didn’t care. The only function of the food they were interested in was its capacity to line the stomach and absorb alcohol. It wasn’t a night to be the designated driver, never mind bodyguard.
Gloria was on fine form, though. She’d heeded what I’d said about keeping her back to the wall and trying to make sure there was a table between her and her admirers. It wasn’t easy, given how many of the female publicans of the North West desperately needed to have their photographs taken in a clinch with my client. But she smiled and smiled, and drank her gin and made a blisteringly funny and scathing speech that would have had a rugby club audience blushing.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been landed with all this ferrying me around,’ she said as I drove across the flat fields of the Fylde towards the motorway and civilization.
‘Who normally does it?’
